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"Important" - John Hodgman, The Daily Show

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Allan Melvin 1922-2008

Well, this was a shock. I was just listening to one of Allan Melvin's introductions to an episode of The Phil Silvers Show on the fine Sgt. Bilko DVD set and wondered,"Gee, how old is Allan Melvin now?" Typing his name into google produced an announcement from TODAY... he died this week. Unreal. The news hit the wires about an hour ago. Melvin was a staple of Bilko, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Brady Bunch, All in the Family, and countless television shows of the fifties, sixties and seventies and many, many commercials. Melvin also did many cartoon voices for Hanna Barbera. See him in some of the Bilko stuff previously posted on this site. Check out Melvin in a commercial, as a villain in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, as a "space enforcer" in Lost in Space, briefly in My Favorite Martian (well, according to IMDB listings he appears in this episode, but I didn't have the patience to sit through it - you tell me if you spot him), as Charlie in an episode of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, The Phil Silvers Show and as Sarge Snorkel in a Beetle Bailey short. More of this to come as I find it.

About Me

My long awaited book about comedy will be published by Grove Atlantic in 2015.
Longtime contributor to WFMU and CBC. Cited by Vanity Fair, GQ, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Onion, Salon, Slate, Atlantic Monthly, BoingBoing, Comedy Central, Dangerous Minds, WTF with Marc Maron, The New York Times, Vice etc.